7 irresistible tactics to get patronage from your ideal customers

Internet usage is continuously evolving with new markets opening and your ideal customers are also transitioning alongside these new developments – you need suitable tactics to get patronage.

Therefore, it is important that you step up your marketing game to ensure that your ideal customers locate and purchase your product or engage your services.

What’s important for marketers is identifying who your prospects and customers are, being where they hangout online, and engaging them in a way that they’re comfortable with to meet their needs.

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In all honesty, whatever it is you think you sell is of utmost irrelevance because the only value of your recommendation to your customers is that which they are willing to acquire.

We all know you can’t control your ideal customer’s decisions but you can influence their choices by optimizing your offer and its presentation in such a way that prospects are attracted to it, and can’t resist converting into clients or customers.

The needs of your ideal customers should be at the fore front of all marketing strategies and decisions you have to implement.

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Therefore, to get your customers to engage and purchase from your brand, you have to gain their trust using certain measurable techniques that will yield sales.

Here are 7 effective tactics that will make your ideal customers engage and purchase your products or services.

Studying your audience is one good tactics to get patronage

If you want to sell your products or services to your audience and ensure they purchase, you should begin by getting to know your audience well. This entails understanding them internet usage pattern and purchase pattern.

Forget about what you’re offering and focus on what they are interested in buying frequently. You should therefore ask yourself some vital questions that will enable you market the right way and in turn get patronage.

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These are some questions you should be able to answer:
1. What tools and services do they currently use?
2. Can you offer a product or a service that helps them solve their problems?
3. Can you write articles or sales copy that your visitors can easily connect with?
4. What kind of content do they typically want to consume?

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Create scarcity of product or service

Another quality that breaks people’s mental patterns is the fact that nothing good in this world is endless. Within our minds, we understand that everything that is valuable comes in limited supply or for a limited time.

At the same time, we tend to attribute a greater sense of value to those things that are bound to run out.

If the inventory seems endless, people feel that it’s OK to hold off on their purchase; on the other hand, if your item is one of the last ones on the shelf, it interrupts the pattern of holding off, and forces them to consider whether it’s worth passing up on the deal.

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If you think about your offer, you may be able to identify many aspects in which your goods are limited. You don’t have more than a certain number of hours a day to consult. Your product inventory isn’t endless.

Even an electronic product is never offered forever — whether by design, or because its value fades over time.

Stop and consider in which ways what you’re offering might be scarce, and whether you may be able to communicate this reality to your audience. It doesn’t have to be in a pushy, late-night infomercial way, either. Just be sincere about it.

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If your product comes in limited supply, tell them. If you only intend to open the offer during a certain period of time, tell them. Be sincere with yourself and your potential clients.

Let others advocate and sell on your behalf

Imagine this; you are about to get married and you want to know the best band to hire for your wedding. Some of your close friends recommend a band and you check them out.

It seems they are good, and you hire them. Sounds familiar?

People call this word-of-mouth, social proof, and other fancy terms. Essentially it all boils down to this- people trust people; they want someone else to make their choice for them; and if it’s someone they already trust, all the better.

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If you have a product or service, get testimonials from your users. Display it prominently on your website- especially on the sales page.

If you want to take things one step further especially B2B, do case studies about how your product or service has helped your existing customers.
Stop trying hard to sell; let others do the selling for you.

Let value be your watchword

Do you know who the easiest set of people to sell to is?

People who have purchased from you in the past!

Yes, repeat buyers are the easiest to convert and can prove to be extremely loyal customers. Customer loyalty done right can result in your customers turning into your advocates and sending more business your way.

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Now that’s easier said than done; but how do you get people to rave about you and get more people flocking in?

Provide outstanding value with your product or service.

There is a reason that scams don’t last long- they don’t get people excited to buy more from the same person. But legitimate businesses have an advantage. You can sell your products over and over again to your existing set of customers.

Enchant your prospects often

Whether you can provide outstanding customer support or innovate constantly like Google, always try to delight your customers every time they buy from you.

I will dare to guess that what the majority of players in your industry do to make their offer more enticing is drop their prices.

Most businesses resort to this tactic because it’s easy to do. Think about it: Dropping your price requires nothing unique nor special. Anybody can decide to cut their profits or even take a loss.

However, most people that are looking to buy, wallets in hand, are much more savvy than to be easily convinced that just because something is cheaper, it’s necessarily the best choice. Most consumers are looking for much more than just a good price.

The offer needs to be of a certain quality, satisfy their need in a very real and particular way, and appeal to them emotionally (more on that below).

Your audience must perceive that the offer is putting forth a significant amount of value, such that it deserves their sacrifice — be it monetary, time, attention, etc.

The way we suggest making your offer attractive is not just to drop your price, but to stretch the distance between the value your audience perceives your offer has, and the cost required to acquire it.

The further apart these two are stretched, the greater the tension in your prospect’s mind, and the more irresistible the purchase becomes.

Quite simply, your audience needs to get the sense that they are getting an amazing level of value for what seems like a much lower price than it seems like it would cost.

A high perceived value at a high price, as well as a low perceived value for a low price, both seem like exactly what would be expected.

However, if they observe a huge gap between the value you’re offering and what you’re asking for it, you have created a mental-pattern breaking phenomenon.

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Your audience must stop in their tracks and seriously consider whether it makes sense to pass up your offer. Attraction begins with that exclamation point in people’s minds. If you’ve created this, you have effectively planted the seed that will pull them in your direction.

It could be as simple as greeting them personally when they come to your site or it could be a surprise same-day-delivery at no extra cost. If you are in the service business, over-deliver on your agreement (a bonus custom-graphics on your web design project maybe?)

Heck, you could even delight your customers by delivering your goods or service ahead of your agreed delivery date.
The more you delight your customers, the higher the chances of them becoming your brand advocates.

Key into your prospects emotions and motivate them

It is not news that you need to be motivating the prospect before they can make a purchase. A good salesperson in the online world is your website. You must be able to channel positive motivation and use that to motivate their prospect.

At the end of the day, interacting with brands that we don’t like just doesn’t make us feel good. This is an experience we all avoid at all costs, even if those brands offer exactly what we want and for the price we’re willing to pay.

This is why we say that all purchases are emotional in nature. The decision to buy is rooted in a deep identification with the person or company offering their product. If they don’t like you, they certainly won’t buy from you.

People tend to like things that they can identify with culturally, ethically, philosophically, or in one of many other ways that affect them profoundly.

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In the same order, people are driven to like things that like them first. Your job does not end with showing your client the benefit of your product. Let them know about the loss they will incur if they miss out on this opportunity.
People call this, “playing with emotions”.

Do you know what motivates people to make purchases that they themselves are not sure of?

It is the feeling of insecurity. They feel that if they do not own the product, they are missing out on something. Even if they cannot identify what they are missing, they will still make the purchase.

You, as a marketer, must truthfully guide your buyer till he makes the right decision. One mistake every small business owner makes is that they consider their product/solution has a huge explicit market. It may or may not be true.

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The reason why I say this is because, once you start selling, you come to know how reluctant people are to buying things from others. Even though your product/solution is a real killer deal, you may fail to find a buyer.

The reason as I mentioned before, is the inability of the buyer to understand the problem.

Help your buyer plan for the future. Your product/solution must be able to eliminate any future problems for your customers.

Motivating a buyer is a simple process when you look at it from the outside. However, when you start at it, you will understand the complexity of the matter.

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Here are some tips to motivate a buyer
• Make sure you let your buyer know what’s in it for them- people hate surprises when it comes to the products or services they paid for. No hidden fees!
• Help them uncover their need. Talk about something your prospect can relate to and say “Aha! I have the same issue”
• Ensure you have an updated portfolio in case you sell services
• If you are competing on price, make sure you let them know how “cheap” you are when it comes to price but not in terms of quality
• Give them an estimate of the cost and turnaround time. Be crystal clear on whether these are likely to change as the project proceeds.
• Assure them of quality work. Let them talk to your previous clients if required
• Stick to your deadlines (Better- deliver before your deadline)
• The classic- Under-promise and over deliver
• Be professional in your dealings. If a client is difficult to deal with, politely part ways
• Give them personal contact details in case of future issues

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In the online world, we have copywriters. They play with words and turn those words into money. Some have their uncanny way of making their words sell.

If you have an online business, you need to understand well the mind-set of an online buyer. If you are not good at writing persuasive copy, hire someone who can do it for you.

One essential tactics to get patronage is having a proof of experience

In the opposite direction, when your offer appears as if many other people are enjoying it, people are more inclined to think that they’re missing out.

This is the same reason why testimonials work so well.

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People get a sense of comfort when they know that other people are taking advantage of what is being offered, and are being left satisfied — especially if those people are similar to them in some manner or another.

Statistically speaking, a very small number of people feel comfortable being beta testers and early adopters.

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Consider in which ways you can communicate the fact that many others have taken advantage of what you’re offering, or have trusted you in a sincere way that validates the quality you’re putting forth.

Conclusion

Do you know where your audience is? In the rapidly evolving online environment, it’s hard to keep in touch with your target audience, even when you know who they are.

Fortunately, there is an ever-growing number of ways to reach your audience. The problem is that by the time you’ve figured out how to reach them efficiently, there’s a good chance their behavior has changed.

Customers are becoming more sophisticated internet users. No longer do just advertising and Web sites get buyers’ attention but rather a broad array of online resources. As consumers, they turn to family, friends, and other consumers for purchase input.

To put this in perspective, 90 percent of consumers trust a recommendation from people they know, 70 percent trust consumer opinions posted online, and 70 percent trust branded web sites, according to Nielsen’s April 2009 Global Online Consumer Survey.

What does this mean for marketers? You need to know your customers beyond who they are, what their interests are, and what types of purchase and other behavior they’ve exhibited in the past.

Since prospects may make different product choices and trade-offs during the purchase process, it’s important to consider how consumers spend their time online, which sites they frequent, who they know, and who influences their purchase decisions.

We never offer our products and services to absolutely every person in the world. Define your target audience, and let your general audience know who your target is. Only if you draw your circle clearly, will you be able to fill it in.

About
Faith Kure

Comments

Our key is to find a very narrow group, with very specific demographics or a very specific problem or need and create raving fans out of this group. We can always expand our reach after we gain traction, but we can also become a big player in this market as we grow.

When we discover our initial ideal client it should impact the thinking about our basic business model and overall business strategy. All great business models are customer focused and now that we have a picture of this customer it’s time to consider how this alters the other aspects of our business. Eventually, thanks for sharing your experience in deep.

Every business gears towards one goal; which is to attract patronage from its target demographic. But once the right measures are not out-rightly put in place, it is almost impossible to achieve patronage. Therefore, seeing your customers beyond the “now” will enable you achieve tremendous success. Thanks for also sharing with me your views on the subject matter.